Transcript An ecologically influenced approach

An ecologically influenced approach for
learning resources
Workshop at JISCCETIS Conference, Birmingham
R. John Robertson,
Repositories Research Officer
JISCCETIS
21st Nov 2007,
[email protected]
R. John Robertson, ECDL2007
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Overview
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Context
Ecology
Restatement of Purpose
Basic concepts
An ecological mindset
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Context
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As outlined by Phil..
Ecology presents a metaphor that has been adopted by other
domains and is – to a degree – intuitive
Some previous use of ecology in information science:
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Nardi & O’Day introduced some concepts from ecology in Information Ecologies:
using technology with heart
Davenport addressed similar questions in the context of ICT in a business setting
in Information Ecology: Mastering the Information and Knowledge Environment
Neither offer a structured method to support thinking ecologically. Rather, they
present relevant issues and concepts from ecology.
Blinco and Maclean’s ‘Cosmic view’ on repository ecologies offers a tool to
identify or type repositories.
Some natural usage of the term ecology or ecosystem
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Blog posts (recent posts using metaphor by: Dave Cormier,
Netvibes ‘ecosystem’
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George Siemens, Kia Pata, Alan Dix )
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Ecology
Brewbrooks (2007)
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/
http://flickr.com/photos/brewbooks/397238796/
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Ecology (2)
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Ecology may be
defined as:
“the branch of
biology dealing
with the relations
and interactions
between
organisms and
their environment,
including other
organisms””.
(Dictionary.com)
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A classic example
is a pond.
Pond ecology © FAO
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Restatement of Purpose
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What are we trying to do?
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Articulate the human alongside the technical
Articulate the complexity and messiness
Support better communication and management
What are we not trying to do?
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This is not a replacement for architectures; whenever you start
to design an system or implementation you still need to start
here
This is not a replacement for service usage models, service
expressions, or related soa work.
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Basic concepts from ecology that are relevant
to digital libraries, repositories, and services
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A dynamic system
Scale
Entities and species
Interactions
Environmental factors
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A dynamic system
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A system
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Constantly changing
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The actions of one entity in the system can effect other entities and
possibly the whole system
Changes in the environment of the system can affect entities and their
interactions
Unlike the architectural metaphor that is implicitly static. There is an
implicit understanding that the environment is constantly changing (and
any representation only produces a snapshot).
Character
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Successful changes need to work with the ecology
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Scale
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In ecology there is a clear need to articulate what level of
interaction you are trying to describe or model. Are you
describing a microbe , a herd of giraffes, a river valley, or a city?
There is overlap and interaction between different scales but an
analysis focuses on one scale at a time
Within the repository domain a similar caution is required. Is the
discussion about interactions between repository networks,
repositories, objects, or metadata? Is it about the policies and
practices of a region, country, institution, class, academic?
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Scale
Figure: Scales at which ecology can be pursued. Figure adapted from Fundamentals of ecology Fall 2003; lecture 1
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Civil-and-Environmental-Engineering/1-018JFall2003/LectureNotes/index.htm
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Scale
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Entities and species
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“An entity is a tangible thing that exists within a repository
ecosystem.”
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William, the repository administrator
JORUM a national learning object repository
 View of repository as social construct – more than software
An article on Google by Alan (http://eprints.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/1062/)
Flickr, an externally hosted image service ( …repository?)
Oaister, an aggregated search service
“A species within an ecosystem is a collective name for a particular
type of entity.”
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It allows what is known about the behaviour of the species to help understand the
actions of a particular entity.
It also enables the description of how a particular entity interacts with any
member of a given type.
Common types of entities are: users; repositories; services; objects; metadata
records.
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Aside: a repository as a social construct
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“a university-based institutional repository is a set of services that a university offers to the
members of its community for the management and dissemination of digital materials
created by the institution and its community members. It is most essentially an
organizational commitment to the stewardship of these digital materials.
[…], an effective institutional repository of necessity represents a collaboration
among librarians, information technologists, archives and records mangers,
faculty, and university administrators and policymakers. At any given point in
time, an institutional repository will be supported by a set of information
technologies, but a key part of the services that comprise an institutional
repository is the management of technological changes, and the migration of
digital content from one set of technologies to the next as part of the
organizational commitment to providing repository services. An institutional
repository is not simply a fixed set of software and hardware.”
(Clifford Lynch ARL: A Bimonthly Report, no. 226 (February 2003) “Institutional Repositories: Essential Infrastructure for Scholarship in the Digital
Age” http://www.arl.org/resources/pubs/br/br226/br226ir.shtml ;
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This definition is pre-Web 2.0 and does not encompass the e-learning dimension
but strongly emphasises that a ‘repository’ is about more than a software.
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Example: entities in collaborative
workspace for students
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Interactions
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“An interaction is a connection, relationship, or link between two or
more entities or species in a population, community, or ecosystem”
This is a broad definition, it is not just related to a function or
technical request and can be between any type of entity; for
example:
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harvest records using OAI-PMH
browse tag cloud
contact repository or service administrator
locate resource
share information
Although it is not required we consider is useful to include the nature
of the interaction [submits, approves, informs, talks about] and the
object (pdf , thesis, image, knowledge, rights)
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Example: interactions in an
collaborative workspace for students
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Environmental factors
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“An environmental factor is something that influences an entity,
community, or ecosystem but is more general [i.e. wide ranging]
than an interaction between constituent entities. ”
It can be
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Something that affects the whole environment (a change in copyright law, a
university-level review of national research output, added functionality form
Blackboard or Moodle)
Something affecting particular entities or species (the availability of a funding
stream for content creation, to explore the application of new technology)
A direct effect from an entity not involved in the particular environment under
consideration (competition for funding or political manoeuvring)
Something that would be an interaction if considered on another scale (the
release of a new specification, or an new trend in the web environment)
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Example: environmental factors in
collaborative workspace for students
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An ecological mindset
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Modelling questions
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What sort of thing (repository or service) is this? – identifying
species and entities
What does it relate to (other repositories or services)? – specify
interactions
What does it depend on? – environmental factors and key
interactions
Analysing questions
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How adaptable is it?
What helps it to thrive? -
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Example: exploring the collaborative
workspace for students
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Further information
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Draft report
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An ecological approach to repository and service interactions
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/Ecology
Related reading
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Bonnie A. Nardi, and Vicki L O’Day, First Monday Vol 4 No 5 May 3, 1999. Information
ecologies: using technology with heart. Chapter Four: Information ecologies.
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_5/nardi_chapter4.html
Thomas H. Davenport, Information ecology, OUP, 1997
R. Heery and A. Powell, Digital Repositories Roadmap: looking forward
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/publications/roadmap-200604/
Rachel Heery and Sheila Anderson, Digital Repositories Review, UKOLN and AHDS, 2005
(Final version)http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/digital-repositories-review-2005.pdf
R. J. Robertson and J. Barton, "Optimising Metadata Workflows in a Distributed Information
Environment", Digital Repositories: Interoperability and Common Services, The Foundation
for Research and Technology, 11-13 May 2005 , Hellas (FORTH), Heraklion, Crete, 2005,
http://delos-wp5.ukoln.ac.uk/forums/dig-rep-workshop/robertsonbarton.pdf
Robertson, R.J. et al. EThOS, the new UK e-theses service, national and institutional
repository interaction. JISC Conference, March 2007.
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/events/2007/03/ethos.ppt
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R. John Robertson, ECDL2007